- Joined
- Aug 21, 2019
Sadly, yes they can. It's what makes HOAs obnoxious. For something like this, they can levy fines and place a lien against the property if they're not paid. In extreme cases they can sue to force the owner to sell the property, but "a dying lawn with weeds" doesn't come close to that scale.
That's if you ignore them, though. Realistically speaking, if you take any action at all towards resolving an HOA's complaint (even if it's just writing a letter back saying "yeah, we'll work on it," it defangs them in court for all intents and purposes, since you can show you're working in good faith to cure the issue and not just ignoring them.
This is why the "go fuck yourself" letter needs to be accompanied by a bit of action to back it up. In our case, after chastising them for caring about property values above all else (and not even bothering to acknowledge kung flu or ask after our well-being), I included a brief mention of having contracted a landscaping company to replace the dying lawn and gave contact information for them to verify. Because we're doing exactly what they demanded of us, all they can do is stew in their own juices if they don't like the tone of my response. If they try to litigate, we can just show the judge the contract and receipt and say "wtf dude, we literally acted within days of receiving the letter, what the hell do they want?"
They pulled this shit a few years ago too (this fucking lawn has been the bane of my existence ever since we bought this house) and all we did was plant some grass plugs in the dead spots, and that was enough to satisfy them. This time enough of it's dead that it would take a lot of plugs to try to restore it, and it'll probably just die again anyway.
So you have to deal with five levels of government? HOA, Municipal, County, State, Federal? I think I'd just eat a gun. It's bad enough dealing with three where I live.